


Mirrored

by StarlightInHerEyes22



Series: Awaken [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Blood, Chrom!Inigo, Cyrkensia, Death of OCs, Friendship, Gen, If you ship them that can be pretty heavily read into it, It's Kinda Dark Guys, Male - Female Bromance, Mild chapter spoilers for Revelations route, Selena's PTSD, There's nothing the Awakening trio wouldn't do for each other, Those three own my heart, Wasn't sure what to rate this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:30:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightInHerEyes22/pseuds/StarlightInHerEyes22
Summary: In Cyrkensia, it is possible for Selena and Laslow to meet on opposite sides of the battle.What would Selena do, if forced to make a choice between her mission and her liege, and one of her oldest and dearest friends - the only family she has in this strange and distant time?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn't let me sleep until I'd typed it up. Inspired by my play through of Revelations, in which circumstances forced me to defeat Laslow with Selena - so I had to go back and fix it. I am still traumatised by that event. 
> 
> Enjoy :)

Selena had once seen Cyrkensia in its prime, years ago. She’d visited with Lady Camilla, who had in turn travelled there with her father to hear the singing. She’d always remembered the city for its light, its cheer. A young woman had tucked a flower into her hair here in this very street, laughing and disappearing with a blush before Selena could ask her why. A kindly grandfather had seen Camilla’s frown and slipped her two sweet-meats from his stall, telling her firmly that only one was for her lady.

This… this devastation laid out before her was a heart-breaking fallacy, standing in the place of a city that had once been filled with music and laughter. 

The corpses bore the colours of Hoshido and Nohr without discrimination, carelessly littering the shattered streets. She stepped carefully among them, wondering distantly how much more difficult they would make keeping her footing in a fight. But worse were those that bore no arms or armour – clad instead in worn homespun cloth, dead because the world didn’t care. It pulled her back to a different war, to horrors that now existed only in her memory. If only such a thing were possible this time around. 

“We need to hurry,” the woman next to her said softly, her voice pitched gently over the growing din of the battle somewhere just around the corner. “Before more people end up like this.”

Selena nodded. She didn’t need to be told, but she picked up her pace to match that of her companions regardless. Samui, she thought the soldier was called. Her sister Esmira trotted on her other side, her face blank and determined. These were good people to be next to in a fight, both driven and focused. Good people full stop – she knew both them vaguely, in the way she knew every member of the force Lady Camilla had led across the sea. She knew that they would have her back. 

(She knew that Samui was engaged to be married, and that now that they had been effectively banished the older woman would likely never see her betrothed again. She knew that Esmira hadn’t wanted to follow their princess in pursuit of Corrin, but that she’d wanted to be parted from her sister less. She knew that for both of them an end to the war was their only hope for a return to something resembling the life that they had planned.)

(She also knew that they were not the two people she ached to have beside her.)

“Be careful,” Selena muttered, because it wouldn’t be the first time she’d lost soldiers to the cowardly attacks of concealed Hoshidan ninja. The battle was growing louder, individual shouts and screams discernible amid the background roar. She wondered where the rest of their force had found itself, whether they were in their positions or not. Then they reached the fork in the road, and it all ceased to matter as a screaming barbarian warrior rounded the corner and tried to hack her head off with his battle-axe. 

Samui and Esmira startled and baulked, but Selena barely blinked. The axe whistled past her head as she ducked and twirled-

_-the Risen leers, grimaces, moans; clawing and scrabbling to get at her warm living flesh, even with her sword buried up to its hilt in the dead thing’s stomach-_

-and buried the hilt of her sword in his stomach, sneering a laugh and imagining that the man must dearly wish that he had invested in more practical armour. She twisted and shoved her booted foot into the back of his knee, sending him crashing to the ground and driving the flat of her blade into the back of his skull. When she was sure that he was not going to get back up, she glanced over to where her companions had finally reacted, darting forwards-

_-and taking the blow that had been meant for her, grinning like a lunatic the entire time even though there’s blood running up her neck and down her arm and clotting in her pigtails, wheezing half formed battle-cries as Selena – yes, that was her name – fights and bites and claws and kills to get them out of that death-trap and to a half-way decent medic-_

-only to hang back awkwardly once they realised that she did not need their help. 

“Come on,” Selena said simply, not bothering to make sure that the sisters were following her before she darted around the corner and leapt whole-heartedly into the fray.

It was not an easy task; wounding instead of maiming, incapacitating instead of killing. There was, at least, only a small knot of tussling warriors in this particular street. Take away enough of their fighters and the rest would grudgingly flee; take away the remaining weapons, and those who remained would give up and crawl away to regroup. These were not the kind of soldiers who would fight on with teeth and bare hands as their weapons. Block off the street twenty metres back the way they had come, and their work would be done; no-one would use this route to make an advance on the other side.

The three of them drove their way through the fighting like a wedge, and she could see the confusion amidst the soldiers at the intrusion of this unmarked faction – both sides hesitated, wary of attacking their own by mistake. She used that to the fullest advantage, hammering the pommel of her sword into the face of the ninja to her left, casually disarming the mercenary to her right and flinging his sword up onto the overhanging rooftops. It’s showy, but then, so is she. The sisters surged up on either side of her, watching her flanks, and she let her gaze move forward – assessing the battle, weighing her options. And she saw him. 

He was facing away from her, but she recognised him by the speed and grace of his sword arm alone-

_-as he whirls and pirouettes across the training field; and his sister, her friend, only watches and laughs, turning to Selena and smiling ruefully. “I don’t know that that move was ever meant for the battlefield, but whatever works, I suppose.”-_

-wielding his blade in a style so familiar and so iconic it took her breath away. He’d lost his helmet, if he’d ever bothered with one, his long fine hair tangling itself in a sweat-soaked snarl around the back of his neck. Peri was nowhere to be seen; somehow he’d allowed himself to be cut off from the rest of his army, and to find himself surrounded by a half dozen Hoshidans and fighting for his life. 

_“That way_!” Selena screamed without really thinking, gesturing wildly and bulling forwards through a crowd that still hadn’t fully realised that she was there. She saw the sisters out of the corners of her eyes, ahead of her, sleek as hunting hounds. They tore through the closest Hoshidans and the same moment that _he_ skewered one and rent the other with a triumphant _hah!_

He twisted to face the remaining Hoshidans, only to find that they were not there. Perhaps he made a move towards Samui, not sure whether she was friend or foe. Perhaps the rebel was the one who threatened him first, after all. They were there to protect, to move the fighters apart and save as many lives as they could. But they were also there to survive. 

Regardless of which came first, he lunged, and Samui moved to defend herself, too slow, too slow. In slow motion, in the heat of the moment, she saw Esmira realise that her sister was going to die. Samui would not parry his strike in time. And a heart-beat later, she saw that Esmira would kill him first in her sister’s defence. He had not yet seen either of them, flanking him to his right. 

There was no time to make a proper decision – but neither was there any decision to be made. 

Selena whirled on the spot and drove her sword through the air with all the force she could muster, feeling it punch through Esmira’s armour and sink into the woman’s lower back. She didn’t pause as her comrade cried out, instead wrenching the blade free with a sickening crunch and a spurt of blood that dyed her hands and chest plate red. Samui barely had time to flinch and scream, an enraged, confused, wounded howl as her sister collapsed gasping to the blood-slicked cobbles, before the edge of the sword slashed through the air, missing _him_ by an inch, and clove her throat in two. 

Selena held her form until Samui had hit the ground alongside her sister, gasping for elusive breath and listening as Esmira drew her last and died, two pools of blood staining the soles of her boots and running to mingle with each other. Mere seconds had passed. The space of heartbeats. Finally, finally, after what may as well have been a lifetime, he startled, hooked his sword through the air, and turned around to face her.

For a moment she thought that he did not recognise her; both their faces flecked with gore, eyes wild with the heat of battle. Certainly, his sword was already curving reflexively to block the stroke that now would never come, and to rend and tear her flesh in consolation. No thought was necessary – she met him in the middle, their blades clashing together with a flare of sparks and holding there between them. Resolute. Immovable. One. 

He blinked. His eyes flicked to her face, to the blood staining her weapon, to the body on either side, then around to the encompassing battle that for a moment had left a tiny pocket of space just for the two of them.

She held his gaze – and suddenly there was so much feeling, so much memory and emotion there between them that she almost went weak at the knees. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to cast Camilla and Corrin’s war aside and take his hand and run, but she could not. She wanted Odin to be there beside them, with a silly remark and a fierce laughing gleam in his eyes, but he was not. No time at all passed, no sound moved between them, but somehow they managed to tell each other all of the words that need to be said. 

_I’m glad your safe,_ were the most important. _I will never harm you, nor let you come to harm._

_I miss you. I wish you were here with me. But even though you’re not for now, I will always, always be on your side. Our side. No matter what this world may say._

_I will not judge you. I will not let you down. If you need me, I will be there._

_You are one half of everything that keeps me sane._

_And if that is what it comes to, I will burn both of these kingdoms to the ground to keep the three of us safe, because you are not a price that I am willing to pay._

_Because you are my family. A part of me. Mine. And one day we_ will _go home._

_And for Naga’s sake, keep an eye on Odin while I’m gone, will you?_

A boy named Inigo dropped his sword to his side with the courtly bow taught to him by his mother. A girl named Severa smirked a grin and tossed her hair, following suit and blowing a kiss.

The man and the woman – Laslow and Selena – turned and walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> Feed the writer! Comments appreciated.


End file.
